A seven-player games session where we actually stuck with a single
group of seven all the way through. Images follow:
cc-by-sa on
everything.

We started the day with
Captain Sonar,
one of my Essen purchases this year. Several of the players rejected
the idea of the real-time mode, so we ended up playing three turnwise
games, with the other moderately experienced player (one previous game
versus my two) on the other team: on my side that ended up as a win,
win, draw. I am best captain. Definitely one I'd like to try more,
getting off the Alpha map, and maybe some day I'll persuade a large
group into the real-time version. (I'm trepidatious about it myself,
but I'd like to try it.)

Next we tried
Don't Mess with Cthulhu,
a reskin of Time Bomb, with the extra cards from the Necronomicon
expansion to allow seven to play. It does get a bit random, and after
three plays one player had been on the losing team every time, but for
a social deduction game with no secret setup phase it does a
reasonable job. Not one I suspect will be a favourite, though.

(Though I still reckon the Crazy Cultist Lady, middle image
here,
knows more than she's saying.)

Someone suggested
Secret Hitler,
which I haven't played in the flesh before (I was in a play-by-forum
game last year, on the basis of which I backed the Kickstarter). It's
very obviously a descendant of The Resistance, which I still love,
but with tweaks: "missions" are just two players, and a mission can
fail (a Fascist policy be enacted) even if they're both acting in good
faith – or sometimes Liberals will deliberately enact Fascist policies
in order to get more power against the Fascists. (This is generally a
bad idea.) I'm a bit dubious about anything that takes table time away
from The Resistance, but I have to say it worked pretty well.
(Fascists won both times; the second time I was one of them.) I do
think there's a bug in that, if Hitler plays entirely as a Liberal,
and the Liberals get everything right, it's purely random whether or
not he becomes chancellor before the Liberals win.

To round off the evening, a quick
Tsuro, where I came
a credible second.